The staple on my desk is shiny and silver and ever so slightly twisted. It isn't very big — a scant half-inch or so — and it is thin enough to be flexible.

I bit down on this piece of metal while I was eating a mushroom-stuffed dumpling that I had brought home from Fu Fu Café the week before last. So my question is this: Can I still love the little Chinese noodle shop anyway?

I want to think I can. I'm funny that way. Deliciousness can trump assorted restaurant sins in my notebook — the better for my food adventures, but very possibly to the dismay of readers with strict standards.

To those sensible souls, let me apologize up front. You might want to avoid Fu Fu Café, where slip-ups obviously happen, where non-Asians face a language barrier, where service is of the harried, slapdash, just-gets-your-food-on-the-table variety.

But if you are a connoisseur of sturdy dumplings in the northern style, or spicy dishes atingle with the numbing, distinctive warmth of Szechuan peppercorns, you might want to take a chance on the joint. I did and I'm glad, although that little staple has tempered my initial enthusiam.

The first time I arrived at the Fu Fu Café it was Saturday, early afternoon, and about 16 people were lined up on the sidewalk waiting for one of the tables inside to free up. The restaurant is small, with no place to stand but in the two aisles — right in the path of the scurrying waitresses — so the de facto foyer is outdoors.

Most of the clientele was Asian, and everybody looked intent as they attacked big plates of dumplings, steaming vats of noodle soup, long fried bread sticks to dip into porridge-like congee, plus all manner of stir-fries.

The minute my order arrived, I, too, grew laser-like in my focus. "Have you ever had a pork filling this juicy?" I asked my companion rhetorically as I hoisted a frilled noodle packet stuffed with ground pork and preserved cabbage. The lightly pickled vegetable gave the filling a lilt that was irresistible.

These were not the delicate, thin-skinned dumplings of a Hong-Kong-style dim sum. The pasta wrappers were stout and pleasantly chewy, the sort of thing that could keep a person warm during a North China winter, insulated against the winds sweeping down from Mongolia. There were 16 of these exemplary dumplings to a $3.99 order, which made them one of the better bargains in town. I might have polished off every single one myself, had Fu Fu's magnificent pan-fried pork dumplings not turned my head.

These oblong rolls come eight to a $4.25 order, and the crusty, glazed sear on the flattened side was a thing of beauty. Again, the pork filling — a more gingery, garlicked one this time — fairly popped with juice. I made a little dipping sauce from the red vinegar, soy and chile oil on the table, but the dumplings were so flavorful I needn't have bothered.

Over the course of several visits, I never encountered a Fu Fu dumpling variety I didn't like. The crimped, conical steamed pork "buns," fashioned of thick pasta rather than a fluffy bao-type dough, turned out to be the famous soup dumplings of Shanghainese cuisine, sealed with a dollop of gelled broth alongside a packet of ground pork, so that the result is juiciness squared.

Eating the soup dumpling without letting the soup escape all at once is quite the trick. My barbarous but effective solution: grasp the dumpling in my right hand, pointy side down, and nibble from its edges, sipping out the broth as I go, as if I were drinking from a pasta cup. The adept might be able to accomplish this using chopsticks, but I know my limits.

Nobody gave me any disapproving looks, either, because they were all too busy chowing down.

A steamed vegetable bun with a filling of cellophane noodles and minced greens has a fresher, lighter effect than the pork version. Steamed mushroom dumplings with a similar filling would have been a hit, too, had I not encountered the famous staple among the leftovers.

The one northern specialty item which fell flat for me was the green-onion pancake, which was unduly heavy and sodden with oil. I love the layery, tender ones; this was neither.

Fu Fu also trades in all sorts of handmade noodle soups, and I admired a simple one of pork and fresh mustard greens with lots of springy, squared-off egg noodles in a white-peppery broth. It was laid-back and comforting enough that it would revive the peckish, yet it wasn't dull.

The stir-fries, which range from the familiar to the exotic, can be lively stuff. I never thought I'd like pork kidney, but prepared with the restaurant's "special spicy sauce," the dense strips of dark-rose meat were tantalizingly gamy and neatly set off by strips of leek, little aromatic bursts of cumin seed and the spreading, insistent warmth of Szechuan peppercorn. Lamb — a staple of northern China — prepared in a similar manner was just as good, and easier for most diners to love.

Also eventful: a glass pie plate full of the juiciest ma po tofu I have ever encountered. The satiny cubes were mined with strips of pork instead of the more common crumbles, and the soupy sauce danced with layers of pepper, from potent toasted red chiles to flecks of Szechuan peppercorn.

The perfect foil to such dishes is Fu Fu's sautéed pea leaves (mature ones, not the baby shoots) with lots of garlic. The flavor bloomed on the palate in an immediate, satisfying way that suggested MSG had been involved. Did I care? Nope. Sometimes MSG can be a guilty pleasure.

Buoyed by my luck with the pork kidney, I struck out for the wilds of this vast menu, and was chastened by a Pork with Sour Napa Hot Pot that resembled nothing so much as a pulpy sauerkraut soup with unidentified flying pork knobs. The broth itself was rather agreeable, but there was a huge quantity of it, plus the mysterious porky bits, delivered well after my party had finished everything else we had ordered. Too much; too weird; too late.

Then the bill came: $55 for four, with a couple of Tsing Taos included, and equilibrium was restored.

For some Houstonians Fu Fu Café will be a lark. For others it will be a perilous walk on the wild side. Dumpling fiends such as Chris Shepherd, the chef at Catalan, will make it a mainstay. Nightowls will love its 2 a.m. closing time, seven days a week. Call me crazy, but staple notwithstanding, I'll be back.